
RUFUS PUTNAM, 



FOUNDER AND FATHER OF OHIO. 



AN ADDEESS 



BY 

/ 
GEORGE F. HOAK, 



ON THE OCCASION OF PLACING A TABLET TO THE MEMORY OF 



RUFUS PUTNAM. 



UPON HIS DWELLING-HOUSE IN RUTLAND, 



17 SEPTEMBER, A. D. 1898. 



PRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 

311 Main Street. 

1898. 



R U F U S 1' U T N yV M , 



FOUNDER AND FATHER OF OHIO. 



AN ADDEESS 



BY , 

GEORGE F. flOAK, 



ON THE OCCASION OF PLACING A TABLET TO THE 3IEJI0KY OF 



RUFUS PUTNAM. 






UPON HIS DWELLING-HOUSE IN RUTLAND, 



17 SEPTEMBER, A. D. 1898. 



'^V V c c :si t c V , ^tt a $ ^ . 

TRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON. 

3 11 Main Street. 

1898. 



^ 



\s 






F^?^ 
.??? 



66942 



The General Putnam Ilou.se, in Rutland, with the farm con- 
taining about 150 acres, is now held by George F. Hoar, 
Elijah B. Stoddard and Burton W. Potter of Worcester, Trus- 
tees, Avho ex[)ect to turn it over to the Trustees of Public 
Reservations as soon as the sum of 11,500 has been raised ])y 
subscription. This is in addition to about |2,<S00, raised 
ah-eady. 



Tablet placed upon the house in Rutland occupied by General 
RuFUS Putnam, by the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the 
Revolution, September 17th, 1898. 



HERE 

FROM 1781 TO 1788 
DWELT 

GENERAL RUFUS PUTNAM: 

Soldier of the Old French War 

Engineer of the Works 

WHICH compelled the British Army 

to evacuate boston 

and of the Fortifications of 

West Point 

Founder and Father 

of Ohio. 

IN THIS HOUSE 

He planned and matured 

THE Scheme of the Ohio Company 

AND from it issued the Call for the 

Convention 

which led to its organization. 

Over this Threshold 

He went to lead the Company 

WHICH settled Marietta 

April 7, 1788. 

TO HIM 

under God it is owing 

THAT THE 

GREAT Northwest Territory 

WAS dedicated forever to 

Freedom, Education and Religion 

and that the 

United States of America 

is NOT NOW A 

great Slaveholding Empire. 



Underneath the Tablet these words are inscribed : "Placed by the 
Massachusetts Society, Sons of the Revolution," with a fac-simile of 
their seal. 



ADDRESS. 



This Society does well to mark with visible and 
enduring tablets the spots where great deeds have been 
performed or great men have been born or dwelt. 
Whatever Massachusetts has done, whatever she is 
doing, whatever she is to accomplish hereafter, is largely 
owing to the ftict that she has kept unbroken the electric 
current flowing from soul to soul forever and forever, 
as it was genei-ated now nearly three hundred years ago 
at Plymouth. Her generations have taken hold of 
hands. 

The men of Plymouth Rock and of Salem, the men 
who cleared the forest, the heroes of the Indian and the 
old French wai'S, the men who imprisoned Andros, the 
men who fought the Revolution, the men who humbled 
the power of France at Louisburg and the power of 
Spain at Martinique and Havana, the men who won our 
independence and builded our Constitution, the sailors 
of the great sea fights of the war of 1812, the soldiers 
who saved the Union, and the men who went with 
Hobson on the Merrimac, or fought with Dewey at 
Manila, or under Sampson or before the trenches at 
Santiago, have been of one temper from the beginning 
—the old Massachusetts spirit, which we hope may 
endure and abide until time shall be no more. 

We guard with an att'ectionate reverence even the 
tombs and burial-places where the dust of our ancestors 



6 

has been laid. As the great orator of New England^ 
said nearly eighty years ago : 

" We naturally look with strong emotions to the spot, 
though it be a wilderness, where the ashes of those we 
have loved repose. Where the heart has laid down what 
it loved most, there it is desirons of laying itself down. 
No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honor- 
able inscription, no ever-burning taper that would drive 
away the darkness of the tomb, can soften our sense of 
the i-eality of death and hallow to our feelings the 
ground which is to cover us, like the consciousness that 
we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the objects of our 
atlection." 

But, after all, we cherish with greater and more 
intense reverence the places where those whom we love 
and honor have dwelt in life, the scenes on which their 
living eyes gazed and to which the living forms were 
familiar, especially the scenes where the great heroes 
and statesmen of the past have dwelt, or the great 
beneficent actions which have determined the currents 
of our history have been jjerformed. 

It is such a man and such a deed that we are here to 
celebrate today. Many facts illustrating the character 
of Rufus Putnam and the service he performed for his 
country have been brought to light for the first time by 
the researches of recent investigation and the publica- 
tion of records hitherto little known or explored, 
especially the archives in the Department of State and 
the diaries and correspondence of some of his associates. 

Rufus Putnam was one of those men, rare in all gen- 
erations, perhaps more rare now than formerly, who 
seem to be almost absolutely without care for self. He 
seems to have been indiflterent to fame. He had little 
use for the first personal pronoun in his speech or his 
wi'itings. He was content to accomplish useful results. 



lie was intent upon the goal, not upon the prize. If he 
could acconii)lisb useful results, he cared nothing for the 
j)ride or glory of the achievement. 

Among the chief elements of his greatness is his great 
unconsciousness. So much the more is it the duty of 
posterity to guard his fame and pay him his due meed 
of credit and honoi*. To the genius of Rufus Putnam 
was due the favorable result at three great turning- 
points in American history. 

It was his skill as an engineer that compelled the 
evacuation of Boston. It was his skill as an engineer 
that fortified AVest Point. To him was due the settle- 
ment of the Ohio Territory and the adoption of the 
Ordinance of 1787, which dedicated the Northwest 
forever to freedom, education and religion, and, in the 
end, saved the United States from becoming a great 
slaveholding empire. 

The limit of the time at my command compels me to 
relate these great transactions rapidly. It must be but 
a sketch, a glance. But I will take time enough to 
make out my case. 

If the British could have held Boston until sufficient 
reinforcements could have come over from England, it 
would have paralyzed the arm of Massachusetts, the 
State which not only furnished more soldiers to the war 
than all the Southern States put together, but, what is 
not so well known, put upon the sea more sailors than 
the entire number of the whole Continental army put 
together — a naval power which, before the French alli- 
ance, raised the rate of marine insurance in England 
to 28 per cent., and caused the merchants of Great 
Britain to compel George III. and Lord North to make 
peace. 

The investment of Boston by the patriotic forces and 



the expulsion of the British was one of the most suc- 
cessful audacities of military history. The British were 
entrenched on a peninsula only accessible by a single 
narrow neck of land. They were an army of trained 
veterans 8,000 strong, supported by a powerful fleet 
whose seamen brought up the force to 11,000, having 
in the harbor at their command 120 transports well 
])rovisioned, well equipped with ample supplies of ammu- 
nition and cannon. They were in the best of spirits. 
The ofiicers and men alike beguiled their time with 
stage plaj'S, masquerades and other diversions, in com- 
fortable quarters, without a thought of danger. Lord 
Howe informed the ministry that there was not the 
slightest fear of an attack. They had, of course, full 
command of the harbor, into which vessels were con- 
stantly bringing provisions in abundance. 

On the other hand, Washington had under his com- 
mand a band of undisciplined husbandmen, scarcely 
14,000 in number, with a few cannon which had been 
captured from the enemy, and a few that had been 
dragged overland from Lake George. He had at best, 
as Mr. Bancroft states, only powder enough to supply 
his few cannon for six or eight days. His men had 
not been paid since the first of the preceding Decem- 
ber. The greater pai't of his men were enlisted for 
but two months. 

The resources of England seemed almost inexhausti- 
ble, and she had also engaged reinforcements of moi'e 
than 20,000 German mercenaries. England could wait. 
Every day increased her strength and courage. Every 
day diminished the hopes of the patriots. 

Washington must fight at this great disadvantage or 
the cause of the country seemed hopeless. He had 
determined, at whatever risk, to march his men across 



9 

the ice against Boston, unless some plan for eoniniand- 
ing the town IVom the neighboring" heights, an aLteni|)t 
whieh had so signally failed at Bunker Hill, should 
be found feasible. 

We shall see in a moment what Rufiis Putnam con- 
tributed to this accomplishment, but for which the 
strength of Massachusetts must have been subtracted 
from the cause of independence. You know well what 
would have become of the cause of independence with- 
out it. 

AVest Point, after Rufus Putnam fortitied it, was to 
the war of the Revolution what Vicksburg was to the 
war of the Rebellion. It prevented the separation of 
New England from the rest of the country, as Vicks- 
burg, while it commanded the Mississii)pi, prevented 
the separation of the States in rebellion in the East and 
West, 'l^he diiference was that our Vicksburg was 
never captured. 

I shall speak a little later of the historical results of 
the settlement of Ohio and the Ordinance of 1787. I 
will first give a brief sketch of the life of Rufus Put- 
nam down to the time when he came to this house in 
Rutland and the time when he left it to found an em- 
pire in the i^orthwest, carrying with him the fate of 
America. 

Rufus Putnam was born in Sutton, in this county, on 
the 9th of April (O. S.), 1738. He came of a race of 
Worcester and Essex County yeomen, distinguished in 
every generation, so far as w^e know their history, for 
public spirit, simplicity, integrity and common sense. 

He was cousin, with a single remove, of Genei-al 
Israel Putnam, the man " who dared to lead where any 
man dai-ed to follow." He was, I think, the gi-and- 
nephew of eJoseph Putnam, father of Isi'ael, another 



10 

hei'o of the old Putnam breed, who defied another hor- 
rible she-wolf, the witchcraft delusion, at the height of 
its power in the very den where it was born, 

Elisha Putnam, father of Rufus, died when the son 
was seven years old. General Putnam's account of his 
family says his father was a much respected citizen, 
town clerk, a deacon in the church, and representative 
from Sutton in the General Court. He died June 10, 
1745. 

His mother married again. The step-father seems to 
have cared little for the child. He was illiterate himself 
and des})ised learning. The little boy, as he tells us in 
a pathetic diary written late in life, had no chance to go 
to school, and little opportunity for learning at home. 
No books were furnished him, and he had little time to 
use books, if he had them. 

Captain Sadler, the step-father, kept a tavern. Rufus 
got a few pennies by waiting upon guests and blacking 
their boots, with which he bought j^owder, and with the 
help of an old gun killed some partridges, which he 
sold and with the proceeds bought a spelling-book and 
an arithmetic. Fi-om these he learned what he could, 
and got as far as the rule of three in arithmetic. But 
the miserly step-fiither would not allow him the light of 
a tallow candle in the long winter evenings and I'idi- 
culed his aspirations for learning. 

In March, 1754, Putnam was apprenticed to Daniel 
Mathews, of Brookfield. He was then nearly sixteen 
years old. Mathews was a millwright. Putnam never 
attended school but three days after he was nine years 
old. 

His em])loyer, more generous than had been the step- 
father, gave him the use of candles for the long winter 
evenings. He studied arithmetic, geography and his- 



n 

toi'y. He extended his knowledge of mathematics and 
engineering, for wliieli he had a natural aptness. His 
physical frame grew as I'apidly as his mind. When he 
was eighteen years old he had the foil vigor and stature 
of a man six feet high. He was renowned Ibi- his great 
strength and activity in all athletic exercises. 

It was to those winter evenings in North Brookfield 
and the studies by the light of the tallow candle that 
his country owed the ablest engineer officer of the 
Revolution, and the wise, farsighted intellect that 
decided the fate of America. 

I have, in my time, known many men famous in war, 
in statesmanship, in science, in the professions and in 
business. If I were asked to declare the secret of their 
success, I should attribute it, in general, not to any 
sup<^riority of natural genius, but to the use they made, 
in youth, after the ordinary day's work was over, of the 
hours which other men throw away, or devote to idle- 
ness or rest. 

Putnam enlisted in the old French war at the age of 
nineteen. His adventures in that war sound like one 
of Cooper's romances. He saved enough of his bounty 
and pay to buy a small faiin. He married in April, 
17G1, Elizabeth, daughter of William Ayers of Brook- 
field, who died shortly afterward. January 10, 1765, 
he married again Persis Rice of Westboro, who was the 
mother of his children. 

He was~made Lieutenant-Colonel of a Worcester 
County regiment at the outbreak of the llevolution, and 
joined the camp at Cambridge just after the battle of 
April 11). His genius as an engineer was soon dis- 
closed. He was, as Washington expressly and i-epeat- 
edly certified, the ablest engineer officer of the war, 
whether American or Frenchman. 



12 

He was soon called by a Council of general and 
field officei-s to direct the construction of a laige part 
of the works on which the position of the army besieg- 
ing Boston depended. He told Washington he had 
never read a word on that branch of science. Bnt the 
chieftain Avould take no denial. He performed his task 
to the entire satisfaction of his commander, and was 
soon ordered to superintend the defences of Providence 
and Newport. 

One evening in the winter of 1775-76 Putnam was 
invited to dine at headqnarters. Washington detained 
him after the company had de])arted to consult him 
about an attack on Boston. The Genei-al pi-eferred an 
iutrenchment on Dorchester Heights, which would com- 
pel Howe to attack him and risk another Bunker Hill 
engagement with a diiferent result, to marching his own 
troops over the ice to storm the town. But the ground 
was frozen to a great depth and resisted the pickaxe 
like solid rock. 

Putnam was ordered to consider the matter, and if he 
could find any Avay to execute Washington's plan to 
i-eport at once. He himself best tells the story of the 
accident — we may almost say the miracle — by which the 
deliverance of Massachusetts fi'om the foreign invader, 
a veteran British army, eleven thousand strong, was 
wrought by the instrumentality of the millwright's 
a])prentice. 

"I left the headquarters in company with another 
gentleman, and on our way came to General Heath's. I 
had no thoughts of calling until I came against his 
dooi", and then I said, ' Let us call on General Heath,' 
to which he agreed. I had no other motive but to pay 
my respects to the General. While there I cast my 
eye on a book which lay on the table, lettered on the 
back, 'Muller's Field Engineer.' I immediately re- 



13 

quested the General to lend it to me. lie denied me. 
I repeated my i-eqnest. He ag-ain i-efused, and told me 
he never lent his books. I told him that he must 
recollect that he was one, who, at Koxbury, in a measure 
compelled me to undertake a business, which, at the 
time, I confessed I had never read a word about, and 
that he must let me have the book. After some more 
excuses on his jjart and close pressing on mine I 
obtained the loan of it." 

In looking at the table of contents his eye was caught 
by the woi-d " chandelier," a new word to him. He read 
carefully the description and saw its importance at a 
glance. The chandeliers were made of stout timbers, 
ten feet long, into which were framed posts five feet 
high and five feet apart, placed on the ground in par- 
allel lines and the open spaces filled in with bundles of 
fascines, strongly picketed together, thus forming a 
movable parapet of wood instead of earth, as theretofore 
done. 

Putnam soon had his plan ready. The men were im- 
mediately set to work in the adjacent apple orchard and 
woodlands, cutting and bundling up the fascines and 
carrying them with the chandeliers on to the ground 
selected for the work. They were put in their place in 
a single night. 

When the sun went down on Boston on the 4th of 
March Washington was at Cambridge, and Uoi'chestei' 
Heights as nature or the husbandman had left them in 
the autumn. When Sir William Howe rubbed his eyes 
on the morning of the 5th, he saw through the heavy 
mists the intrenchments, on which, he said, the rebels 
had done more work in a night than his whole army 
would have done in a month. He wrote to Lord Dart- 
mouth that it must have been the employment of at least 
12,000 men. His own effective force, including seamen. 



14 

was but about 11,000. Washington had but 14,000 fit 
for duty. 

" Some of our officers," said the Annual Register — 
Edmund Burke was the writer — "acknowledged that the 
expedition with which these works were thrown up, 
with their sudden and unexpected appearance, recalled 
to their minds the wonderful stories of enchantment and 
invisible agency which are so frequent in the Eastern 
romances." 

Howe was a man of spirit. He took the prompt 
resolution to attempt to dislodge the Americans the next 
night, before the works were made impregnable. Earl 
Percy, who had learned something of the Yankee quality 
at Bunker Hill and Lexington, was to command the 
assault. But the power that dispersed the Armada 
baffled ail the plans of the British general. There came 
"a dreadful storm at night," which made it impossible to 
cross the bay until the American works were perfected. 

We take no leaf from the pure chaplet of Washing- 
ton's fame when we say that the success of the first great 
military operation of the Revolution was due to Rufus 
Putnam. The Americans under Israel Putnam marched 
into Boston, drums beating and colors flying. The 
vetei'an British army, aided by a strong naval force, 
soldier and sailor, Englishman and Tory, sick and well, 
bag and baggage, got out of Boston before the strategy 
of Washington, the engineering of Putnam, and the 
courage of the despised and untried yeomen, from whose 
leaders they Avithheld the usual titles of military respect. 
"It resembled," said Burke, "more the emigration of a 
nation than the breaking up of a camp." 

The history of the founding of Ohio and of the Ordi- 
nance of 1787 has been bi'ought to light lately, chiefly 
from researches in the Department of State, the pub- 
lication of the diaries of Manasseh Cutler, the coi'- 



1.-; 

respondcnce of Timothy Pickering and the papers of 
Kiifus King. 

This is a tit occasion to tell the story of Putnam's 
share in these great transactions. April 7, 1783, 
Timothy Pickering, Quartei-master-General in the armies 
of the United States, afterward Secretary of War, 
Secretary of State, Seci'etary of the Treasury, Kei)re- 
sentative in Congress and Senator, writes a letter to Mr. 
Hodgdon, in which is the following passage: 

" A new plan is in contemplation, no less than forming 
a new State westward of the Ohio. About a week since 
the matter was set on foot and a plan is digesting for the 
piu'pose. Enclosed is a rough draft of some proposi- 
tions respecting it. They are in the hands of General 
Huntington and General Putnam for consideration, 
amendment and addition." 

'I'he eleventh article of this draft enclosed in Pick- 
ering's letter contains this sentence : " The total exclu- 
sion of slavery from the State to form an essential and 
irrevocable part of the Constitution." General Hunt- 
ington is not, so far as I know, heard of again in the 
transaction, but Putnam is found pressing the scheme 
thenceforth until its final accomplishment. April 14, 
1783, Pickering again writes to Hodgdon. He says: 
" General Putnam is warmly engaged in the new- 
planned settlement on the Ohio." 

Later, a petition signed by 288 officers in the Conti- 
nental Army is presented to Congress, praying for the 
location and survey of the Western lands. This peti- 
tion, in which Putnam heads the list of Massachusetts 
signers, is forwarded by him to Washington. A year 
later Putnam writes to Washington again, renewing his 
urgent application to him for aid in his project. He 
says the j)art he has taken in promoting the [)etition is 



IG 

well known. He has given much time to it since he 
left the army. 

He specially urges the adoption of the New England 
township system. He asks the General to recommend 
to him some member of Congress with whom he can 
directly cori'espond, as he does not like even to hint 
these things to the delegates from Massachusetts, 
though worthy men, as Massachusetts is forming plans 
to sell her own eastern lands. Washington answers 
that he has exerted every power with Congress that he 
is master of, and has dwelt upon Putnam's argument for 
speedy decision, but that Congress has adjourned 
without action. 

In 1785 Congress appointed General Putnam one of 
the surveyors of the northwestern lands. Putnam 
accepted the office. He says in his letter of acceptance: 
" A wish to promote immigration from among my 
friends into that country, and not the wages stipulated, 
is my principal motive." 

Putnam, however, had made some engagements which 
made it impossible for him to go in person to Ohio 
and make the survey. His friend. General Tupper, 
undertook the duty. Tupper could not get below 
Pittsburg in the season of 1785. He came back to 
Massachusetts with such knowledge of the country 
as he could get from inquiry, and reported to Putnam 
at Rutland in this house on the 9th of January, 
178G. 

The two veterans sat up together all night. At day- 
break they had completed a call for the convention to 
form a company. It was addressed to all officers and 
soldiers of the late war, and all other good citizens 
residing in Massachusetts who might wish to become 
purchasers of lands in the Ohio country. The invitation 



17 

was to extend afterward to inlial)itaiit.s of otlier States 
" as might be agreed on." 

This eonvention was eom})osed of delegates iVom tlie 
various counties in Massachusetts, met at the Bunch of 
Grapes in Boston, Mai'ch 1, 1786, and chose a conunittee, 
of whicli Putnam was chaii'man, to di'aft a phm for the 
organization. This organization constituted the Ohio 
Company, of which Putnam, General Samuel H. Parsons 
and Rev. Manasseh Cutler were chosen directors. Early 
in 1787 the directors appointed Putnam superintendent 
of all their affairs, and in the winter of 1786-87 the 
organization was completed and the associates selected. 

It remained only to get the grant of the lands. There 
had been various schemes in Congress from March 1, 
1784, for the organization of the Northwest territory. 
Jefterson reported one on the first day of March in that 
year, which contained a provision excluding slavery after 
1800. The subsequent history proves beyond a question 
that a toleration of slavery until that time would have 
ended in making the whole territory slaveholding. 

But even that limited and ineffective prohibition was 
stricken out by the Congress. March 16, 1785, Rufus 
King of Massachusetts offered a resolve that there 
should be no slavery in this territory. It was sent to a 
conunittee of which he was chairman and amended by 
postponing the prohibition of slavery till 1800, and with 
a clause providing for the surrender of fugitive slaves. 
That was never acted upon and died in committee. 

In 1786 a new committee w^as i-aised to pro})ose a })lan 
for the governmciut of the tei-ritory. They made a report 
which contained no prohibition of slavery whatever. 
That rei)ort also remained without action until the end 
of the Congress. 

When Putnam had got his plan for the company I'eady 



18 

and secured his associates, he sent General Parsons to 
Congress to secure the grant of the lands and the pas- 
sage of an ordinance for the government of the territory. 
But Parsons returned having accomplished absolutely 
nothing. 

Putnam was not discouraged. He met Manasseh 
Cutler, the other director, in Boston, June 25, 1787, 
and it was agreed that Cutler should renew the attempt 
in which Jeiferson and Rufus King and Parsons and 
Washington and several committees of the Continental 
Congress had so conspicuously failed. 

Manasseh Cutler records in his diary : " I conversed 
with General Putnam and settled the principles on which 
I am to contract with Congress for lands on account of 
the Ohio Company." 

Cutler reached Kew York, where Congress was in 
session, on the 6th of July, and was introduced into their 
chamber. He explained his scheme to the members of 
Congress. In three days a new committee was ap- 
pointed, the ordinance, which had expired with the last 
session, brought forward and committed. A copy of 
the ordinance was sent to Cutler, that he might make 
remarks and prepare amendments. 

The next day, the 10th, the ordinance was newly 
modelled. It was reported to Congress on the 11th. 
But it did not include the clause prohibiting slavery be- 
cause, as Nathan Dane, who reported it, said, he had no 
idea the States would agree to it. But Dane moved it 
as an amendment. It was inserted and passed unani- 
mously, save the single vote of Abram Yates. 

During the two or three days that this ordinance was 
pending the committee proposed to reject some of Cut- 
ler's amendments; he does not specify which. "There- 
upon he paid his respects to all the members of Congi*ess 



19 

in the city, inforincd them of his intention to dejiart that 
day, and if his terms were not acceded to, to tnrn his 
attention to some other part of the conntry." 

They nrged him, as he says, to " tarry till the next 
day, and they would put by all other business to com- 
l)lete the contract." He records further in his diary 
that " Congress came to the terms stated in our letter 
without the least variation." 

Why was it that Congress came in three days to 
terms which the intluence of Washington and of Jeffei- 
son had failed to accomplish for more than four years? 
Putnam and Cutler were masters of the situation. The 
Ohio Company might well dictate its own terms, even in 
dealing with the far-sighted statesmen of 1787. 

The purchase and settlement of this large body of the 
public lands removed from their minds several subjects 
of deepest anxiety. It afforded a provision for the 
veterans of the war. It extinguished a considerable 
portion of the public debt. It largely increased the 
value of the rest of the public domain. It placed the 
shield of a settlement of veteran soldiers between the 
frontiers of ISTew York, Pennsylvania and Virginia and 
the most dangerous and powerful Indian tril^es on the 
continent. 

It secured to American occupation a territory on 
which England, France and Spain were still gazing with 
eager and longing eyes; in which England, in violation 
of treaty obligation, still held on to her military posts, 
hoping that the feeble band of our union would break in 
pieces. It removed a fear, never absent from the minds 
of the public men of that da3% that the Western settlers 
would form a new confederacy and seek an alliance with 
the power that held the outlet of the Mississii)pi. 

The strength of this last apprehension is shown in 



20 

the confidential coiTespondence of Washington. He 
twice refers to it in his farewell address, — once when he 
warns the West against " an apostate and unnatural 
connection with any foreig-n power"; and again, when he 
urges them, " henceforth to be deaf to those advisers, if 
such there are, who would sever them from their breth- 
ren and connect them with aliens." 

Cutler returned to Massachusetts successful and in 
ti'iumph. He was not himself one of the first settlers 
ill Ohio, but his sons represented him. 

Putnam led his company down the Ohio River to 
Marietta on board a galley appropriately' named the 
Mayflower, giving new honor and fragrance to the 
name. He landed with his little company of forty-eight 
men April 7, 1788. 

There is no question that but for this clause in the 
Ordinance that territory, if it had remained a part of the 
country, would have been slave territory. It Avould 
have been settled from Virginia and Kentucky. As it 
was, it was saved to freedom as by fire. The people of 
Indiana repeatedly petitioned Congress to be relieved 
from the clause prohibiting the introduction of slavery. 
A majority of the people of Illinois was pro-slavery, 
and the recognition of slavery in the first constitution 
of that State was only prevented by the dexterity and 
sagacity of Governor Coles. 

When Ohio was admitted in 1802, the convention that 
framed her Constitution contained a large number of 
the friends of slavery. Rufus Putnam, himself a meni- 
Ijer of the convention, called up late at night the son of 
Manasseh Cutler, also a member of the convention, from 
a sick bed, told him of the danger, and the two patriots 
repaired to the chamber just in time to save the estab- 
lishment of slavery, which was lost by a single vote. 



21 

Now, in the li<^ht of this history, if Rufus Putnam l3e 
not entitled to the credit of the Ordinance of 1787, and 
of having saved this country from becoming a great 
slaveholding empire, then WeUington is not entitled to 
the credit of Waterloo, or Washington to the ci-edit of 
YorktoAvn, or Grant to the credit of Api)omattox. 

Putnam is the first person known to have in his pos- 
session five years before this enactment the plan for the 
organization of the Ohio Company, in which the total 
exclusion of slavery from the State was to form an 
essential and irrevocable part of the Constitution. Then 
for the next four or five years he is found, and found 
alone, pressing that scheme upon the consideration of 
Washington, and through him upon a reluctant Con- 
gress. 

He accepts the ofHce of surveyor, only that he may 
promote this scheme. Not able to go himself, he re- 
ceives from General Tupper in this house the informa- 
tion gained by him at Pittsburg. In this house is 
formed the plan of the Ohio Company, and from it he 
issued the call for its first convention. He is made 
chairman of the committee to draw up a perfected 
scheme. He is made by that company the general direc- 
tor of its affairs. 

At its meeting in Boston, November 21, 1787, he is 
chosen superintendent, " to be obeyed and respected 
accordingly." He sends Cutler to Congress, first hav- 
ing agreed with him in Boston upon the principles upon 
which the company will make the purchase, is there 
any doubt that among those principles Avas the inexora- 
ble condition of the exclusion of slavery, which was in 
his hands and upon which he had determined from the 
beginning? 

He leads the company to Marietta. On the first anni- 



22 

versary of the settlement of Marietta, in 1789, the 
company voted that the 7th of April be forever observed 
as a public festival, being, as they say, " the day 
when General Putnam commenced the settlement in this 
country." 

All the contemporary histories of Ohio assign him this 
credit. Lossing calls him the father of Ohio. Burnet 
says, " He was regarded as their principal chief and 
leader." Harris dedicates the documents collected in his 
appendix to Rufus Putnam, the " founder and father of 
the State." 

And at last, that the great drama might end as it 
began, his vote saved the State from the imposition of 
slavery by its constitutional convention in 1802. His 
vote — his single vote and his summons to the son of his 
old friend, Manasseh Cutler — secured the majority of 
one which saved the State from the imposition of slavery 
in 1802. 

Suppose those five States, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, 
Indiana, Wisconsin, which were formed from the Ohio 
territory, had been settled from Virginia, each of them 
another Missouri or another Kentucky? What think 
you would have been our condition today? A few 
States, perhaps, on our eastern and northern border 
without slavery, but subjected forever, if the Union had 
lasted, to the slaveholding rule of which we had experi- 
ence, even as it was, for the generation before the 
breaking out of the rebellion. If there be, in the annals 
of this republic, save Washington and Lincoln alone, a 
benefactor whose deeds surpass those of Rufus Putnam, 
I have read American history in vain. 

Washington said of Rufus Putnam that he was the 
best engineer in the army, whether French or Ameri- 
can. At the end of the war he directed Putnam to 



23 

report a comi)i'ehcnsive plan for foi'tifying the whole 
country. I have seen General Putnam's elaborate 
scheme, I think among his papers at Marietta College, 
or in the archives at Washington. It was never 
executed, in s]iite of earnest appeals of some of our 
al)lest statesmen in every generation from Washington 
to Jackson and Tilden and Eugene Hale. 

It remains a monument of that national improvidence 
of which we have shown so many conspicuous examples, 
especially in the matter of preparation for defence and 
for war, and which, during the last few months, has even 
dimmed the glories of Manila and Santiago. 

To be a great engineer is to be a great soldier. To 
be a great engineer w^ith only such advantages of educa- 
tion as Rufus Putnam enjoyed is to be a man of con- 
summate genius. But to have been the trusted friend 
of Washington; to have conceived as by a flash of in- 
spiration the works which with an inferior force com- 
pelled England to evacuate a fortified town and to quit 
Massachusetts forever; to have constructed the very 
fortress and citadel of our strength and defence in the 
war of the Revolution; to have been in Lord Bacon's 
front rank of sovereign honor; to have founded a mighty 
State, herself the mother of mighty States; to have 
planned, constructed and made impregnable the very 
citadel and fortress of liberty on this continent; to have 
turned the mighty stream of current and empire from 
the channel of slavery into the channel of freedom, there 
to flow forever and forever, — if this be not greatness, 
then there is no greatness among the living or the dead. 

I must not leave your opinion of the value of the great 
work of Rufus Putnam to depend upon my testimony 
alone. Daniel Webster declared in his reply to Ilayne: 
" We are accustouied to praise the lawgivers ol" anti- 



24 

quity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and 
Lycurgus, but I doubt whether one single law of any 
lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of 
more distinct, marked and lasting character than the 
Ordinance of 1787. 

" It fixed forever the character of the population in 
the vast regions northwest of the Ohio by excluding 
from them involuntary servitude. It impressed on the 
soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity 
to sustain any other than free men. It laid the interdict 
against personal servitude in original compact not only 
deeper than all local law, but deeper, also, than all local 
constitutions." 

Mr. Webster added : " We see the consequences of 
the ordinance at this moment, and we shall never cease 
to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall flow." 

Judge Walker, the eminent Jurist of Ohio, declares: 
" Upon the surpassing excellence of this ordinance no 
language of panegyric would be extravagant. The 
Romans would have imagined some divine Egeria for 
its author. It approaches as nearly to absolute perfection 
as anything to be found in the legislation of mankind; 
for, after the experience of fifty years, it would perhaps 
be impossible to alter without marring it. In short, it 
is one of those matchless specimens of sagacious fore- 
cast which even the reckless spirit of innovation would 
not venture to assail. The emigrant knew beforehand, 
that this was a land of the highest ])olitical as well as 
natural promise; and under the auspices of another 
Moses, he journeyed with confidence toward his new 
Canaan." 

Judge Story says : " The ordinance is remarkable for 
its masterly display of the fundamental principles of 
civil and religious liberty." 



25 

Chief Justice Chase, in his sketch of the liistoiy of 
the " Statutes of Ohio," said: "Never, probably, in the 
history of the world, did a measure of legislation so 
accurately fulfil and yet so mightily exceed the anticipa- 
tions of the legislators. The ordinance has well been 
described as having been a pillar of cloud by day and 
of fire by night, in the settlement and government of 
the northwestern States." 

During the years he lived in Rutland* he gave himself 
without stint to the service of the town. ]^o work was 
too humble for him if it were a duty or a service. He 
had the noble public spirit of his day. For five years 
he tilled this farm, and seems to have done everything 
his neighbors asked of him. 

He was representative to the General Court, select- 
man, constable, tax collector, on a committee to lay out 
school lands, committee to make repairs of school-house, 
State surveyor, commissioner to treat with the Penob- 
scot Indians, volunteer in putting down the Shays rebel- 
lion, on the committee to settle with Jabez Fairbanks. 
He was one of the founders and first trustees of the 
Leicester Academy, and, with his family of eight chil- 
dren, gave from his slender means £100 towards its 
endowment. 

The rest of his life is, in large part, the history of 
Marietta for more than thirty years. " The impression 
of his character," says the historian, " is strongly 
marked in the history of Marietta, in their buildings, 
institutions and manners." 

Now this seems to me to be a good, honest, old- 
fashioned American story. It is a Massachusetts story. 
It is a Worcester County story, although we by no 
means pretend to a monopoly of such things in Massa- 
chusetts or in Worcester County. We have got over 



26 

wondering at them. The boy went to school but three 
days after he was nine years old. That has happened 
before to many a boy who became a great man, from 
Ulysses to Abraham Lincoln. 

A Worcester County farm in those days was a pretty 
good school. It was a pretty good school, both for the 
intellect and the heart. The boy learned the secrets of 
the forest and the field, the names and habits of bird 
and beast. He could take care of himself anywhere. 
He became an expert woodsman and sharpshooter. 

He heard high topics discussed in the church — I beg 
your pardon — in the meeting-house. The talk by the 
blacksmith's forge and the tavern fire, and the rude 
drafting-board of the millwright, when the great politi- 
cal contest with England was pending, was of the 
true boundary between liberty and authority in the 
government of the State, and between men's free will 
and God's foreknowledge and omnipotence in the 
government of the universe. 

The moral quality of our great English race, too, 
came out in that simple life of plain Hving and high 
thinking. Every day brought to those frugal house- 
holds its lesson of affection, of self-sacrifice. 

" Love had be found in huts where poor men he : 
His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
The silence that is in the starry sky, 

The sleep that is among the lonely hills." 

The old French war, with its adventures and escapes 
through the forests, was better for him than a West 
Point education. But above all were the love of coun- 
tiy, the sense of duty, the instinct of honor, glowing as 
bright in the bosom of the country boy as in that of a 
Bayard or a Sidney. And so, when his country needed 
him and his God called him, he was ready. 



27 

My friends, I do not know what you tliink about it. 
But for myself, as a son of Massachusetts, I would 
rather possess among her historic monuments this simple 
dwelling of this Rutland farmer, when I think of what 
it stands for, all it has contained, all the memories that 
cluster around it, than to have the palace of the Tui- 
leries. 

As Edward Everett said of Mount Vernon : " The 
porter's lodge, or the dog kennel of the palace, erected 
by the gratitude of England to the victor of Blenheim, 
could not have been built for its entire cost." 

Her Majesty's master of hounds, or the keeper of the 
queen's mews, or the purveyor of the royal kitchen, I 
dare say, would disdain it as a dwelling-place. Cer- 
tainly there were columns, there were carvings in the 
famous French palace built from the plunder of foreign 
capitals and the spoils of groaning peasants and subject 
peoples, as a symbol of the glory of France and the 
military genius of her monarchs, which cost more than 
the whole of this simple structure. But at least an 
angry people will never tear it down as the symbol of 
their own degradation and oppression. 

Three days at school after you were nine years old; 
bootblack and blacksmith's assistant at Sutton; mill- 
wright's apprentice of Brookfield; town constable of 
Rutland; friend of Washington ; deliverer under Wash- 
ington of Massachusetts from the foreign invader; 
builder of our stronghold and citadel at West Point; 
engineer of the great constitutional fortress of Ameri- 
can liberty; faithful over a few things, ruler over many 
things, — we come today to your dwelling as to a 
shrine. 

It is not to be forgotten. It must not be forgotten, 
unless Mount Vernon is to be forgotten. There is 



28 

nothing left but a few stones of the cellar wall of Put- 
nam's birthplace, as there is nothing left but a few 
bricks of the birthplace of Washington. But this 
house is still to be seen as Mount Yernon is still to 
be seen. It can be preserved at a slight cost for 
many centuries to come. This reverent, affectionate 
task is well worthy the piety and patriotism of our 
generation. 



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